52 Ancestors: #8–Charlotte Debolt: Making a Case for her Parentage

Charlotte Debolt was my fifth great-grandmother, and someone I’m still getting to know. Information has been hard to come by, particularly concerning her relationship with her husband, and discovering the identity of her parents. Charlotte was married to Daniel Debolt, a man about fifteen years her senior. They were the parents of seven children, at least that I’ve been able to identify so far. The 1820 and 1830 censuses find them in Licking county, Ohio, and in 1840, Charlotte is still there and identified as “head of household.” Daniel seems to spend the remainder of his life in the households of two of his children, but not again with Charlotte. Charlotte and several of her children removed to Peoria county, Illinois, where she passed away in 1851 and is buried in Princeville cemetery.

There’s certainly more to learn about Charlotte’s relationship with her husband, but I may be asking for too much. However, I may be having some luck in identifying her parents. I found a Charlotte Debolt listed in an index to abstracted wills in Washington county, Ohio. She was listed as an heir of Patrick Burnsides. My bubble was burst, however, when I saw that this Charlotte's husband was named William. But something kept bothering me, so I decided to see review my documentation of Charlotte.

Charlotte was born in New Jersey about 1790. I did find a Patrick Burnsides in Essex county, New Jersey in a tax list dated 1793, which of course, doesn’t prove much. In 1830, when Daniel and Charlotte lived in Licking county, Ohio, they lived next to a William Burnsides – perhaps a coincidence. I decided to go ahead and order the probate file for Patrick Burnsides from Washington County. Sure enough, right off the bat Charlotte is mentioned with her husband, William Debolt. However, further into the probate file Charlotte is mentioned again, this time with her husband named as “Daniel” DeBolt! Also listed among the heirs was William Burnsides... the same William Burnsides who lived next to Daniel and Charlotte in 1830? Hmmm....

This is not exactly ironclad proof, but I’d say I probably have the right father for Charlotte, at long last. Now, if I could just figure out why she and Daniel parted…

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Hello! I'm Karen, a "50-something" located in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. I'm a lab technologist by day, and by night, well, a house-cleaning, dinner-cooking, webmaster, family historian, blog-author, baseball-watching, facebooking grandma.